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Our intention is to inform people of racist, homophobic, religious extreme hate speech perpetrators across social networking internet sites. And we also aim to be a focal point for people to access information and resources to report such perpetrators to appropriate web sites, governmental departments and law enforcement agencies around the world.

We will also post relevant news worthy items and information on Human rights issues, racism, extremist individuals and groups and far right political parties from around the world although predominantly Britain.

Thursday, 2 December 2010

Germans are more critical of Islam and less tolerant of building mosques than their neighbours in France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal, a new survey has found.

Despite the other European countries’ often fractious relationships with their Muslim communities, people there were relatively positive about Islam and its followers compared to Germany, according to the survey commissioned by a research group based at the University of Münster.

According to weekly Die Zeit, which reported on an advance version of the study on Thursday, four out of 10 Germans in the former west of the country and 50 percent in the former east feel threatened by foreign cultures.

“Compared with the French, Dutch and Danish, a rigid and intolerant grasp of foreign religions predominates in Germany,” said the head of the project, sociologist Detlef Pollack. “The statement that Islam is part of Germany is completely disregarded in the opinions of Germans.”

The polling firm TNS Emnid, on behalf of the Münster researchers, surveyed 1,000 people each in the former west and former east Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal. The study will be officially released later on Thursday in Berlin.

Fewer than 5 percent of Germans, compared with more than 20 percent of Danes, French and Dutch consider Islam to be a tolerant religion, according to the study.

Each of the other countries has had high-profile conflict with their Muslim communities – such as the Prophet Mohammed cartoons in Denmark, head scarf controversies in France and the murder of anti-Islam filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, as well as the rise of far-right politician Geert Wilders.

Nevertheless, a clear majority of people in those countries have a positive view of Muslims. By contrast, just 34 percent of western Germans and 26 percent of eastern Germans are positive about Muslims.

Most Germans saw barely any positive side to Islam, Pollack said. Less than 30 percent in the former west supported the building of mosques, while in the former east the figure was less than 20 percent. The acceptance of minarets or the adoption of Muslim holidays received even less support.

In Denmark, by comparison, more than half of respondents supported the building of mosques, while in France and the Netherlands the figure was about two-thirds and in Portugal it was nearly three quarters.

Admin comment: Well done to all the members of the Hope Not Hate Facebook page for achieving this.

A pub landlord has shut the door on the English Defence League after they hired out a function room under a different name.

The Kent branch of the EDL – a far-right group set up last year to oppose the spread of Islamic extremism across the country - had made plans to hold a meeting at O'Connells, Chatham, at 8pm tonight.

Labour councillor Vince Maple, who actively campaigns for the Love Music Hate Racism campaign, said the pub had now cancelled the booking.

"I have spoken to pub and police and they confirmed, unsurprisingly, that the room was booked in a different name and the pub had no idea the EDL were planning to use their venue.

"They have now confirmed there will be no meeting of any description tomorrow."

Chief Inspector Peter de Lozey added: "Kent police in Medway have been made aware that there is information circulating that the English Defence League plan to hold a meeting tonight at a public house in Medway.

"We have spoken with the licensee of the pub in question and have been advised that the meeting will not be going ahead."

West Yorkshire Police Authority chairman, Councillor Mark Burns-Williamson, is to pursue a response from the Home Secretary about the policing of events such as the English Defence League demonstration in Bradford.

Coun Burns-Williamson wrote a joint letter, with Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison, two months ago to Theresa May, exploring whether organisers of such protests could be accountable under civil law for providing stewards and a contribution towards the costs.

The EDL protest, and a counter-demonstration by Unite Against Fascism, in Bradford in August, cost almost £650,000 to police, plus £100,000 spent by Bradford Council on work for the event at the Bradford Urban Garden.

Yesterday, Coun Burns-Williamson said: “The Home Secretary praised the work of the police and the Council in a Commons statement, but we have not even had an acknowledgement in relation to the quite detailed letter we both wrote. I am going to be following that up.”

A police authority resources committee meeting tomorrow will approve the spending on the EDL demonstration.

Three youths were convicted Wednesday by an Austrian court for attacking visitors at a former concentration camp last year. A court in the town of Wels found the male teenagers guilty of neo-Nazi activities and handed down suspended prison sentences of between five and six months, Austrian press agency APA reported. A fourth boy was acquitted. The incident happened in May 2009 during a memorial event to commemorate the liberation of prisoners of the Ebensee camp at the end of World War II. One of the boys shocked visitors by goose-stepping in camouflage gear, shouting 'Heil Hitler' and other neo-Nazi slogans. He and the others fired plastic ammunition with gas-powered weapons and hit one camp survivor and three other attendees. Three of the four youths were 16 during the attack, while one was only 14.

The verdicts did not immediately enter into force, pending possible appeals. The incident had lead to debate in Austria about young people's historical awareness. Authorities of Upper Austria province where Ebensee is located have drawn up an action plan to prevent youth extremism and violence. An organization of concentration camp survivors and Christian and Jewish representatives have presented new educational concepts for youths that add anti-racism workshops to Holocaust education. Of the 27,000 men from all over Europe who were deported to Ebensee, around 8,500 perished in the camp run by the SS.

Blacks and Jews were the most likely victims of hate crimes driven by racial or religious intolerance in the United States last year, the FBI said Monday in an annual report.

Out of 6,604 hate crimes committed in the United States in 2009, some 4,000 were racially motivated and nearly 1,600 were driven by hatred for a particular religion, the FBI said.

Blacks made up around three-quarters of victims of the racially motivated hate crimes and Jews made up the same percentage of victims of anti-religious hate crimes, the report said.

Anti-Muslim crimes were a distant second to crimes against Jews, making up just eight percent of the hate crimes driven by religious intolerance.

Hate crimes include not only attacks on a person or property motivated by racism or anti-religious sentiments, but also by prejudices based on a person's or group's sexual orientation, ethnic origins or disability, the report said.

"Just in the past month, three men were indicted in New Mexico for assaulting a disabled Navajo man," the report says.

In another hate crime, a person placed a hangman's noose on the house of a Honduran immigrant in Louisiana, while in another, a man was sentenced for torching a predominantly African-American church in Massachusetts.

Overall, some 8,300 people fell victim to hate crimes in 2009, down from 9,700 the previous year.

Two-thirds of the 6,225 known perpetrators of all US hate crimes last year were white, but they represented only 16 percent of victims, the report said.

A wave of violent attacks against immigrants by suspected right-wing extremists has put Muslims and the police on alert in rundown parts of Athens with burgeoning migrant populations. Immigrants have been beaten and stabbed near central squares, and several makeshift mosques have been burned and vandalized. In the most grievous attack, at the end of October, the assailants locked the door of a basement prayer site and hurled firebombs through the windows, seriously wounding four worshipers. “The attacks are constant — I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Naim Elghandour, who moved to Athens from Egypt in the 1970s and now heads the Muslim Association of Greece. “I used to be treated like an equal. Now I’m getting death threats.”

Tensions in neglected, crime-ridden parts of Athens with growing immigrant communities have been mounting over the past two years. Highlighting expanding public discontent, the extreme right-wing group Chrysi Avgi, or “Golden Dawn,” won its first ever seat on the Athens City Council in local elections three weeks ago. The group mustered strong support in working-class neighborhoods in the capital and elsewhere in Greece by describing migrants as a drain on the economy, which is reeling from a debt crisis, and calling for immediate deportations. The Greek news media linked the group to the violence after a spray-painted cross merged with a circle — a symbol used by extreme rightists worldwide — was found on the wall of a firebombed prayer site. But the police have not confirmed a connection, saying no arrests have been made. The group did not respond to requests for comment.

Thanassis Kokkalakis, a police spokesman, said the problem was complex. He said that while “extremist elements” were believed to be behind certain attacks, there was also violence between migrants of different ethnic origins, muggings of Greeks by poverty-stricken foreigners and clashes between extreme rightists and left-wing protesters. “All this chaos stems from a constantly growing population of immigrants in these areas,” said Mr. Kokkalakis, noting that about 150 migrants arrived in Athens daily despite the mobilization of European Union guards in early November at Greece’s land border with Turkey. “The upheaval has fueled aggravation among residents, which is being exploited by extremist groups.” The residents of the problem areas are divided: Some want dialogue and better policing, while others are taking matters into their own hands. Elderly and middle-aged residents often sit in local squares during the daytime, shouting abusive statements at migrants when they go by. Small gangs of teenagers stalk the neighborhoods by night, but it remains unclear if they are locals or visiting extremists.

The police have stepped up patrols following reports of attacks by vigilantes who, locals say, are as young as 14. “I saw three kids bashing an Afghan man with wooden poles until blood ran down his face,” said Muhammad, the Syrian manager of a convenience store in Aghios Panteleimonas, once a lively neighborhood, now a no-go zone. Like other migrants living in the area, he would not give his surname for fear of reprisals. The exact number of attacks remains unclear. “The victims are usually too scared to go to police,” said Thanassis Kourkoulas, a spokesman for Deport Racism, a group that offers targeted migrants advice and support. Others say this reflects a general trend in Europe. “Hate crimes against Muslims are underreported and underrecorded,” said Taskin Soykan, who advises the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on combating racial intolerance.

The attacks in Greece mirror similar incidents in other European countries, including Switzerland, where a referendum last November led to a ban on the construction of minarets on mosques, and in France and Italy, where the authorities have deported Roma residents and immigrants. “The difference in Italy is that most of the attacks were in the provinces, while in Greece they are in the heart of the capital, which is potentially far more explosive,” Liz Fekete of the Institute of Race Relations in London said. “The common factor is the formation of vigilante groups, egged on by the far right.” Angry protesters, including some thought to be right-wing extremists, had to be restrained by the police last month when thousands of Muslims congregated in several Athens squares for a religious festival. At one site, officers fired tear gas to disperse a small group of demonstrators, who continued their protest from the balconies of apartment complexes, pelting worshipers with eggs and playing loud music to disturb the prayers.

The day after the protests, government officials said a stalled project to build an official mosque was back on track. Athens is the only capital of the original 15 E.U. member states to lack a state-approved mosque. Although the country’s influential Orthodox Church has given its support to the project, opinion polls show that half of Athens’s five million residents oppose the creation of a mosque to serve the capital’s Muslim community, which numbers about 500,000. “A large mosque with minarets in the city center will be a provocation,” said Dimitrios Pipikios, the head of a residents’ group in Aghios Panteleimonas, where Chrysi Avgi drew 20 percent of the vote in recent elections. Mr. Pipikios said the only way to ease tensions was to deport immigrants. “There is no room for us all,” he said, adding that extreme rightists were patrolling the area “because the police are not doing their job.”

Other residents said they felt intimidated. “The situation is totally out of control,” said Maria Kanellopoulou, who wants not deportations but the better social integration of immigrants. The local authorities are determined to tackle the problem, said a spokesman for Giorgos Kaminis, the newly elected mayor of Athens. “Chasing immigrants away from city squares is an established technique of extreme rightists, and we are seeking advice on how to deal with it,” said the spokesman, Takis Kampilis, who has approached the municipal authorities in Germany, who have averted similar campaigns by neo-Nazis. The new mayor is also planning to improve health care and housing for migrants and organize street markets where they can legitimately sell wares rather than touting illegally on street corners. Ms. Fekete said increasing integration would help, but to stamp out extreme violence, local and central governments must condemn it in strong terms. “If the authorities do not speak out, public tolerance of the violence will grow,” she said. “This is a wake-up call.”